St. Landry democrat., 1887-10-08

" quill, quite four feet
from the feather to
the point, or as long
as halfgrown boy, but from the sunny We
randa beneath it seemed of the familiar goose
Quill size to one who sat there and saw II
move at every culver of the zephyr. as quick
as the will of the wind before that will had
been expressed.
It seemed, indeed, like pen still obeying
the pulse in the human wrist-the pulse OF
phantom hand long busy with the concerns
of life and destiny, and now from the clouds
of spirit realms reaching down invisible
fingers to write against the naked air, which
retains no impressions.
Or, others less inclined to see human
motive in the Golden Quill, might have
compared its eager finding motion to the
highly electrified conditions Of faithful pen
warmed for thirty years by one fond and
daring hand now palsied in the dust, and
with its guide departed, the Golden Quill
still poised itself as if listening in the winds
for its kind old master and holding ready for
him to resume his tasks.
A Ightning-rod man had come along and
applied the Golden Quill to a no less cleo
trifed but less spiritual application.
He had pierced it with the shaft Of his
conductor and, so to speak, impaled it while
yet alive, and had then secured it above and
below by small golden balls so that it could
neither rise nor descend.
a larger ball representing the earth vas
situated just below the Golden Quill; and this
supported the cross of metal which held ex-
tended the golden letters for the points Of
the compass: North, South, East and
West.
The pediment or gable over which the
quill was set rose out of the middle Of the
library buildings face and had two doors
opening upon balcony or smaller upper
veranda, which was on level with
the upper boughs of the chestnut and oak
trees growing over the declivitous mountain
lawn. One of these doors led to the small
chamber where slept Euphorian Waite, a
guest upon the mountain.
The other door opened into the larger
chamber over the library where slept an
other guest, Doris Mott.
They were already in love.
To woman never in love before, barely
twenty, and beloved by man more than
handsome, like Euphorian Waite, the salts
faction was complete.
To man in love madly, with an ardent
spirit, but poor and struggling to maintain
himself and his dependent parents and in
valid sister, the confidence of being beloved
was agony.
He sat on the long balcony below of even
ings as Doris sat above near her chamber
among the fragrant trees which EMPOWERED
her with their tops like a golden bird in its
nest, and wondered when he would be indie
pendent enough to call her his wife and say
"Good-night' no more with reluctant kisses
when she passed into her easement and
closed its bolts, but he now repaired to his,
through the twin easement, and lay down to
the torture of love, uncertainty and poverty.
Then the Golden Quill above would seem
to groan, as it moved in the summer night
breeze and repeated his signs; and at morn
ing the dews upon the balcony floor would
seem TO have been the tears shed by the
spirits of the young poisoning trees.
he would descend to the great veranda
and look up toward her easement in the
morning, to repeat with her the caroling and
twittering of matin love all the birds were
making about the lawn.
But he only saw, for while, till her bright
face and golden hair appeared, the impaled
pen held to its perch by the cruel barb and
glittering rivets, like some vessel anchored on
shoal above the green depths of ocean, and
rocking on the surface as it strained its
cables and tugged to sail away.
Euphorian Waite was slave of the quill
"a newspaper writer.
In the great civil war, which had COM
memorated this mountain gap with one
OF its brief and furious engagements,
Euphorian Waite had been a newspaper
correspondent and had made public repu-
tation.
he had followed the army of Sheridan in
the neighboring valley and written his de-
canve battles and the repulses of his assail-
ants with fervor and imagery which made
him the delight of the soldiery and their
families at home, while his proud, collected,
ofheer-ike bearing gave him a respect
among the Union officers not always en-
Joyed by such newspaper writers as rapacious
publishers sent to the feld-poorly mounted
and often poorly educated. None Of these
were poorer than Euphorian, but none poa-
sessed his sense of honor and smingling On
dignity and dress. He spent his twenty or
thirty dollars week, first upon his mother,
and most OF what remained upon his toilet
and camp establishment, horses ard outfit
In the midst Of the camp he was gentle
man, equally gentle and austere as his